With what little light coming through that window, we are like trees

I knew this was coming and have been mentally bracing?, distancing?, preserving?, myself for how things were going to unfold, but I gotta tell you things still sway me, still hit my core. I'm sitting here, half a asleep, a little stunned, and not emotional at all, staring at the light that comes through my little window. This week the original group of 90 something people (my group, 2007-2009), the NGO side having 43, is losing 2 more volunteers. Yeah, not much to say. Everything swirls around events that lead up to these decisions of leaving. Everything. There's no real measure of how tough you are or if a person like you can really hack it. There's no concrete idea of success or failure. It is what it all is. It's not so black and white, man, there are so many different shades of gray, and in so many ways I'm tired of pulling things apart to try and understand how all the results come out. I do know that I understand... on some level I can't even really put into words most of the time... why people leave. Why they stay. Why they're tired. Why they're angry. Why they wish to jump over the counter at the post office and hug the woman who didn't overcharge them. Why chocolate still seems to be soothing. Why tears still come. Why it's not about homesickness anymore. Why it's hard to gather words to describe something. Why "I understand" and "I know" have become phrases frequently used. Why lights at the end of the tunnel are where they focus their sights. Why, even after so much loss, when they hear someone is leaving or someone has been violated in some way, they feel the punch in the gut and then the feeling spreads through all the limbs. Why self preservation has become a goal. Why they know love is in all the chaos and they fight to find it. Oh, why they fight, fight, fight through the battle. Why they focus on the little things. Why they tell themselves that being productive and cranking out numbers is not the only reason they're here. Why they gotta do what they gotta do. Why they, even when they're so, so tired, still question why.